## BEFORE THE SECOND CONGRESS

### I.

London astonished us with its grandeur. And though on the day of our arrival there was incredible frost, Vladimir Ilyich's face lit up at once, and he began to look about with curiosity at this stronghold of capitalism, forgetting for the time being both Plekhanov and the conflicts in the editorial office.

We were met at the station by Nikolai Alexandrovich Alexeyev, a comrade living in London in emigration and having studied English well. He was at first our guide, since we found ourselves in rather helpless condition. We thought we knew English, because in Siberia we had even translated from English into Russian an entire thick book—the Webbs. I had studied English in prison from a self-instruction manual, and had never heard a single live English word. When we began to translate Webb in Shushenskoye, Vladimir Ilyich was horrified at my pronunciation: "My sister had a governess, and she didn't pronounce it that way." I didn't argue, but retaught myself. When we arrived in London, it turned out—we understood not a damn thing, and no one understood us. At first we got into ridiculous situations. This amused Vladimir Ilyich, but at the same time cut him to the quick. He set about studying the language earnestly. We began going to all sorts of meetings, taking seats in the front rows and carefully watching the speaker's lips. At first we went quite often to Hyde Park. Orators speak there to passers-by—about various things. An atheist stands there proving to a group of curious people that God does not exist,—we particularly liked to listen to one such orator, who spoke with an Irish pronunciation that was more comprehensible to us. Beside him an officer from the "Salvation Army" shouts hysterically words of appeal to the almighty God, and a little farther on a shop-assistant tells about the penal servitude of shop-assistants in large stores... Listening to English speech gave us much. Later Vladimir Ilyich obtained through advertisements two Englishmen who wished to take reciprocal lessons, and studied with them diligently. He learned the language quite well.

Vladimir Ilyich also studied London. He did not go to see London's museums—I'm not talking about the British Museum, where he spent half his time, but there it was not the museum that attracted him, but the richest library in the world and the facilities there for scholarly work. I'm talking about the ordinary museums. In the museum of antiquities after 10 minutes Vladimir Ilyich would begin to experience extraordinary fatigue, and we would usually very quickly scurry out of halls hung with suits of armor, endless rooms filled with Egyptian and other ancient vases. I remember only one small museum from which Ilyich could not tear himself away: it was the museum of the 1848 revolution in Paris, housed in one little room, it seemed on the rue des Cordelières, where he examined every little thing, every drawing.

Ilyich studied living London. He loved to climb on top of an omnibus and ride about the city for hours. He liked the movement of this enormous commercial city. Quiet squares with stately mansions, with mirror windows, all overgrown with green, where only polished cabs drive, and huddled nearby—dirty alleys, inhabited by London working people, where laundry is hung in the middle and pale children play on the steps, remained aside. We would penetrate there on foot and, observing these glaring contrasts of wealth and poverty, Ilyich would repeat through his teeth: "Two nations!" But from the omnibus too one could observe many characteristic scenes. Around bars (drinking establishments) stood bloated, ragged lumpenproletarians, among them one could often see some drunken woman with a black eye, in a velvet dress with a train, with a torn sleeve, etc. From the omnibus we once saw how a mighty bobby (policeman), in his characteristic helmet with a strapped chin, an iron hand thrust before him a puny boy, apparently a caught thief, and a whole crowd followed with yelling and whistling. Part of the public riding on the omnibus jumped to their feet and also began to yell at the thief. "N-o-o-w," Vladmir Ilyich would mutter. A couple of times we rode on top of the omnibus in the evening on paydays to working-class quarters. Along the pavement of a wide street (road) stood an endless row of stalls, each lit by a burning torch,—the pavements were flooded with crowds of male and female workers, a noisy crowd buying all sorts of things and right there satisfying their hunger. Vladimir Ilyich was always drawn to the working crowd. He went wherever there was this crowd—on outings where tired workers, having gotten outside the city, lay for hours on the grass, to bars, to reading rooms. There are many reading rooms in London—one room, which you enter directly from the street, where there is not even any seating, but only reading stands and newspapers attached to sticks; the person coming in takes a newspaper and after reading hangs it back in place. Such reading rooms Ilyich later wanted to establish everywhere among us. He went to folk restaurants, to church. In England in churches after services there is usually some short lecture and then discussion. These discussions, where rank-and-file workers would speak, Ilyich especially loved to listen to. In newspapers he sought out announcements of workers' meetings in remote quarters, where there was no parade, no leaders, but there were workers from the bench, as they now say. The meeting was usually devoted to discussion of some question, a project, for instance, garden cities. Ilyich would listen carefully and then joyfully say: "Socialism just pours out of them! The speaker spouts nonsense, but let a worker get up—and he grabs the bull by the horns, uncovers the very essence of the capitalist system." On the rank-and-file English worker, who had retained despite everything his class instinct, Ilyich always relied. Visitors usually see only the working-class aristocracy corrupted and bourgeoisfied by the bourgeoisie. Ilyich studied of course this upper stratum too, the concrete forms into which this influence of the bourgeoisie poured, never for a moment forgot the significance of this fact, but tried to find and the motive forces of the future revolution in England.

To what meetings we did not wander! Once we strayed into a S.D. church. There are such in England. A responsible S.D. worker read the Bible through his nose, and then gave a sermon on the theme that the exodus of the Jews from Egypt was a foreshadowing of the exodus of workers from the kingdom of capitalism to the kingdom of socialism. Everyone stood and sang from S.D. prayer-books: "Lead us, Lord, from the kingdom of capitalism to the kingdom of socialism." Later we went to this "Seven Sisters" church again for a discussion with youth. A youth read a report on municipal socialism, arguing that no revolution was needed, and an S.D., who at our first visit to the "Seven Sisters" church appeared as a priest, declared that he had been in the party for 12 years and fighting opportunism for 12 years, and municipal socialism is pure opportunism.

We knew English socialists little in domestic life. The English are a reserved people. They looked at Russian émigré bohemia with naive astonishment. I remember how one English S.D., whom we met once at the Takhtas' place, questioned me: "You really sat in prison? If my wife were put in prison, I don't know what I would do. My wife!" The all-consuming dominance of philistinism we could observe in the family of our landlady—a worker family, and also in the Englishmen who gave us reciprocal lessons. Here we thoroughly studied all the bottomless vulgarity of English philistine life. One of the Englishmen who came to us for lessons, who managed a large book warehouse, asserted that he considered socialism the theory that evaluates things most correctly. "I am a convinced socialist," he said, "I even at one time began to appear as a socialist. Then my boss called me and said he didn't need socialists, and if I wanted to stay in his service, I should hold my tongue. I thought: socialism will come inevitably, regardless of whether I speak out or not, and I have a wife and children. Now I don't tell anyone that I'm a socialist, but I can tell you." 

This Mister Raymond, who had traveled through nearly all of Europe, lived in Australia, elsewhere, and spent long years in London, had not seen half of what Vladimir Ilyich managed to see in London in his year there. Ilyich once dragged him to Whitechapel for some rally. Mister Raymond, like the great majority of Englishmen, had never been to this part of the city, inhabited by Russian Jews and living its own life, unlike the life of the rest of the city, and marveled at everything.

According to our custom, we also wandered the outskirts of the city. We most often went to what is called Primrose Hill. This was the cheapest end—the whole outing cost sixpence. From the hill one could see almost all of London—a smoke-covered mass. From here on foot we would go farther into the bosom of nature—into the depths of parks and green roads. We loved going to Primrose Hill also because nearby there was a cemetery where Marx was buried. We went there.

In London we met Apollinaria Alexandrovna Yakubova, a member of our Petersburg group. In Petersburg times she was a very active worker, everyone valued and loved her, and I was connected with her by joint work in an evening-Sunday school beyond the Nevsky Gate and friendship with Lidia Mikhailovna Knipovich. After exile, from which she had fled, Apollinaria married Takhtar, former editor of "Workers' Thought." They now lived in emigration, in London, apart from work. Apollinaria was very gladdened by our arrival. The Takhtas took us under their wing and helped us settle cheaply and relatively comfortably. We saw the Takhtas all the time, but since we avoided talk of "workers'-thoughtism," there was a certain tension in relations. A couple of times it flared up. We explained ourselves. In January 1903, I think, the Takhtas (Tary) formally declared their sympathy for the "Spark" direction.

Soon my mother was to arrive, and we decided to settle as a family—rent two rooms and eat at home, since Russian stomachs were little adapted to all these "bullocks' tails," flounder fried in fat, cakes, and we lived at this time at state expense, so we had to economize every kopeck, and living with our own household was cheaper.

In the conspiratorial sense we settled as well as possible. In London then no documents were asked for; one could register under any name. We registered as Richters. A great convenience was also that for the English all foreigners look alike, and our landlady always considered us Germans.

Soon Martov and Vera Ivanovna Zasulich arrived and settled together with Alexeyev in a commune in one of the houses that more resembled European dwellings, close to us. Vladimir Ilyich immediately settled in to work in the British Museum.

He usually left in the morning, and Martov would come to me in the morning; we would sort the mail and discuss it. Thus Vladimir Ilyich was spared a good deal of the bustle that tired him so.

The conflict with Plekhanov was somehow resolved. Vladimir Ilyich went away for a month to Brittany to see his mother and Anna Ilyinichna, to live with them by the sea. The sea, with its constant motion and boundless expanse, he loved very much; he rested by the sea.

### II.

People began to arrive in London to see us right away. Inna Smidovich arrived—Dimka, who soon left for Russia. And her brother, Petr Germogenovich, arrived, who on Vladimir Ilyich's initiative was christened Matrena. Before that he had sat for a long time. Coming out of prison, he became an ardent spark-man. He considered himself a great specialist in washing out passports,—they supposedly had to be washed out with steam, and in the commune at one time all the tables stood upside down, serving as presses for the passports being washed out. All this technique was very primitive, like all our conspiration at that time. Re-reading the correspondence with Russia now, one is astonished at the naïveté of that time's conspiration. All these letters about handkerchiefs (passports), brewing beer, warm fur (illegal literature), all these code names of cities beginning with the letter with which the city name began (Odessa—Osip, Tver—Terenity, Poltava—Petya, Pskov—Pasha, etc.), all this replacement of male names with female and vice versa,—all this was to an extreme degree transparent, sewn with white thread. Then it didn't seem so naïve, and yet to some degree it did muddy the trail. At first there was not such an abundance of provocateurs as later. People were all reliable, knowing each other well. Agents of "Spark" worked in Russia; they were supplied with literature from abroad—"Spark" and "Dawn," pamphlets,—they took care that "Spark" literature was reprinted in illegal printing houses, distributed "Spark" literature among committees, took care of supplying "Spark" with correspondence and of keeping "Spark" informed of all the illegal work being conducted in Russia, collected money for it. In Samara (at Sonya's place) lived the Gryznov—Krizhanovsky, Gleb Maksimillianovich—Kler, and Zinaida Pavlovna—Snail. There also lived Maria Ilyinichna—Little Bear. In Samara there immediately formed something like a center. The Krizhanovskys had a special ability to group people around themselves. Lengnik-Kurtz settled in the south, lived at one time in Poltava (at Petya's place), then in Kiev. In Astrakhan lived Lidia Mikhailovna Knipovich—"Uncle." In Pskov lived Lepeshinskii—Bast and Liubov Nikolaevna Radchenko—Pasha. Stepan Ivanovich Radchenko by this time was exhausted utterly and left illegal work, but Stepan Ivanovich's brother, Ivan Ivanovich, worked without cease on "Spark" (he was also Arcadius, he was Kasyan). He was a traveling agent. Another such agent, who carried "Spark" about Russia, was Silvin (Vagabond). In Moscow worked Bauman (he was also Victor, Wood, Grach) and closely connected with him Ivan Vasilievich Babushkin (he was also Bogdan). Among the agents was also closely connected with the Petersburg organization Elena Dmitrievna Stasova—Slush, she was also Absolute, as well as Glafira Ivanovna Okulova, who after Bauman's exposure settled under the name Little Hare in Moscow (at the Old Woman's place). "Spark" conducted active correspondence with all of them. Vladimir Ilyich reviewed every letter. We knew in great detail who of "Spark's" agents was doing what, and discussed all their work with them; when connections between them broke, we would reconnect them, informed of exposures, etc.

"Spark" had a printing house working in Baku. The work was conducted under conditions of strictest conspiracy; brothers Epukidze worked there, Krasin directed the affair (Horse). The printing house was called Nina.

Later in the north, in Novgorod, they tried to set up another printing house—Akula. It failed very quickly.

The former illegal printing house in Kishinev, which was managed by Akim (Leon Goldman), had by the London period already failed.

Transport went through Vilna (through Grunja).

The Petersburgers tried to arrange transport through Stockholm. There was an enormous correspondence about this transport, which functioned under the name "beer," we sent literature to Stockholm in puds, we were informed that beer had been received. We were confident that it had been received in Petersburg and continued sending literature to Stockholm. Then, in 1905, returning through Sweden to Russia, we learned that the beer was still in the "brewery": simply speaking, a whole basement in the Stockholm people's hall was filled with our literature.

"Small barrels" were sent via Vardö; once, I think, a shipment was received, then something went wrong. In Marseille they settled Matrena. She was to arrange transport through the holds of ships that sailed to Batumi. In Batumi they arranged receiving literature "horses"—the Bakunites. However, most of the literature was thrown into the sea. (Literature was wrapped in canvas and thrown into the water at an agreed place; we would fish it out.) Mikhail Ivanovich Kalinin, who at that time worked in a factory in Petersburg and was part of the organization, through Slush passed an address in Toulon to some sailor. Literature was transported through Alexandria (Egypt); they arranged transport through Persia. Then transport was arranged through Kamenets-Podolsk, through Lvov. If all these transports consumed enormous amounts of money, energy, work in them was connected with great risk, probably not more than one-tenth of all that was sent arrived. They also sent in suitcases with false bottoms, in book bindings. Literature was instantly snatched up.

"What Is to Be Done?" had particular success. It answered a series of the most pressing, ripening questions. Everyone felt acutely the necessity of a conspiratorial, methodically working organization.

In June 1902 in Bialystok there took place a conference organized by the Bund (Boris), which was entirely exposed, except for the Petersburg delegate. In connection with it Bauman and Silvin were exposed. At this conference it was decided to form an organizational committee for convening the congress. The matter, however, dragged on. There was a need for representation from local organizations, but they still had an extremely unformed, heterogeneous character. In Petersburg, for instance, the organization was divided into a workers' committee (Manya) and an intellectual committee (Vanya). The workers' committee was supposed to conduct primarily economic struggle, the intellectual—to conduct high politics. However, this high politics was rather petty and more resembled liberal politics than revolutionary. Such a structure grew on the soil of economism: economism, broken on principle, held firmly still in the localities. "Spark" properly evaluated the significance of such a structure. A special role in the struggle for correct structure of organizations belonged to Vladimir Ilyich. His "Letter to Erema" or, as it is called in literature, "Letter to a Comrade" (I will speak of it further), played an exceptional role in the matter of organizing the party. It helped to proletarianize the party, draw in the resolution of all the burning questions of politics workers, broke down the wall that had been erected by the workers'-thoughtists between worker and intellectual. In the winter of 1902-1903 there was desperate struggle of directions in organizations; the spark-men gradually conquered the position, but there were times when they were "thrown out."

Vladimir Ilyich directed the struggle of the spark-men, cautioning them against simplified understanding of centralism, fighting the tendency to see in every living, independent work "cottage-industry." All this work of Vladimir Ilyich, which so deeply influenced the qualitative composition of the committees, is little known to youth, and yet it was precisely this that determined the character of our party, laid the foundations of its present organization.

The workers'-thoughtists—economists were especially infuriated by this struggle, which deprived them of influence, and protested against "commanding" from abroad.

For negotiations on organizational questions, on August 6 there arrived from Petersburg comrade Krasnukha with the password: "Have you read 'Citizen' No. 47?" From then on he went by the code name Citizen. Vladimir Ilyich spoke much with him about the Petersburg organization, its structure. P. A. Krasikov (he was also Musician, Squeaker, Ignat, Pankrat) and Boris Nikolaevich (Noskov) also participated in the meeting. From London they sent Citizen to Geneva to talk with Plekhanov and finally "become spark-like." A couple of weeks later there came a letter from Petersburg from Erema, who had expressed his thoughts on how work should be organized in the localities. It was not known whether Erema was a single propagandist or a group of propagandists. But this was not important. Vladimir Ilyich began to think out a reply. The reply grew into a pamphlet "Letter to a Comrade." It was first printed on a hectograph and distributed, and then in June 1903 was published illegally by the Siberian committee.

In early September 1902 arrived Babushkin, who had escaped from the Ekaterinoslav prison. Some schoolboys helped him and Gorovic to escape from prison and cross the border, bleached his hair, which soon turned crimson, attracting universal attention. And he arrived at our place crimson. In Germany he got into the hands of commissioners, and they barely managed to save him from being sent to America. We settled him in the commune, where he lived throughout his stay in London. Babushkin grew terribly during this time in political terms. This was already a hardened revolutionary, with an independent opinion, who had seen a mass of workers' organizations, who had no need to learn how to approach a worker,—he himself was a worker. When a few years before he came to Sunday school, this was a quite inexperienced fellow. I remember such an episode. He was at first in a group under Lidia Mikhailovna Knipovich. There was a lesson in the native language; we were picking some grammatical examples. Babushkin wrote on the board: "We will soon have a strike at our factory." After the lesson Lidia took him aside and scolded him: "If you want to be a revolutionary, you can't show off that you're a revolutionary, you have to have restraint, etc., etc." Babushkin blushed, but then looked at Lidia as at his best friend, often consulted with her about affairs and spoke with her in a special way somehow.

At that time Plekhanov came to London. A meeting was arranged together with Babushkin. The discussion was about Russian affairs. Babushkin had his own opinion, which he defended very firmly, and held himself in such a way that he began to impress Plekhanov. Georgy Valentinovich began to look at him more attentively. Babushkin spoke of his future work in Russia, however, only with Vladimir Ilyich, with whom he was especially close. I also remember one small but characteristic episode. A couple of days after Babushkin's arrival, coming to the commune, we were struck by the cleanliness that reigned there,—all trash was cleaned up, newspapers were laid on tables, the floor was swept. It turned out that Babushkin had brought order. "A Russian intellectual always has dirt—he needs servants, and can't clean up after himself,"—said Babushkin.

He soon left for Russia. Then we never saw him again. In 1906 he was captured in Siberia with a weapons transport and together with his comrades shot at an open grave.

Before Babushkin's departure, there arrived in London those who had escaped from Kiev prison and were spark-men: Bauman, Krokhmahl, Blumenfeld, who carried to Russia a suitcase with literature and was caught at the border with the suitcase and addresses and was then taken to Kiev prison, Wallach (Litvinov, Papa), Tarsis (he was also Friday, Pyatnitsky).

We knew that a prison escape was being prepared in Kiev. Deich, who had just appeared on the horizon, a specialist in escapes, who knew the conditions of Kiev prison, asserted that it was impossible. However, the escape succeeded. From outside ropes, an anchor, passports were passed in. During a walk they bound the guard and overseer and climbed over the wall. Only the last in line didn't manage to escape—Silvin, who was holding the overseer.

Several days passed as if in a fog.

In mid-August there came a letter from the editorial office of "Southern Worker," a popular illegal organ, reporting on exposures in the south and that the editorial office wished to enter into the closest relations with the organization "Spark" and "Dawn" and declared its solidarity in views. This, of course, was a big step forward in the work of uniting forces. However, in the next letter "Southern Worker" expressed dissatisfaction with the sharpness of "Spark's" polemic with liberals. Then began talk that the literary group of "Southern Worker" should continue to preserve its independence, etc. It was felt that not everything was being said.

Meanwhile from Samara they reported that there had arrived to them Bronstein (Trotsky), who had escaped from Siberia, that he was an ardent spark-man, making a very good impression on everyone. "A real young eaglet," the Samarans wrote. They christened him Pen and sent him to Poltava to negotiate with "Southern Worker." From negotiations with "Southern Worker" he came away with the impression that one could work with these people, and he noted and precisely formulated points of disagreement at "Southern Worker": 1) underestimation of peasant movement; 2) dissatisfaction with the sharpness of polemic with liberals; and 3) the wish to remain a separate group and publish their own popular organ.

Soon, it seems, in early October, Trotsky arrived in London.

One early morning there was a violent knock at the front door. I already firmly knew that if they rang not with signal rings, it was for us, and hurried down to open the door. It turned out to be Trotsky,—I showed him to our room. Vladimir Ilyich had just awakened and was lying in bed. Leaving them together, I went to arrange with the cab-driver, to prepare coffee, etc. When I returned, I found Vladimir Ilyich still sitting in bed and animatedly discussing with Trotsky some rather abstract theme. And both the warm recommendations of the "young eaglet" and the very first conversation made Vladimir Ilyich look particularly carefully at the newcomer. He spoke much with him, went for walks with him.

Vladimir Ilyich questioned him about his trip to "Southern Worker," and he liked the definiteness of Trotsky's formulations, that he had immediately been able to grasp the very essence of the disagreements, and through a layer of benevolent statements to see the wish, under the guise of a popular newspaper, to preserve the separation of his little group.

From Russia they were persistently calling Trotsky back; Vladimir Ilyich wanted him to stay abroad, study more, and help work on "Spark."

Plekhanov immediately became suspicious of Trotsky; he saw in him a supporter of the younger part of the "Spark" editorial board (Lenin, Martov and Potresov), a pupil of Lenin. When Vladimir Ilyich sent Plekhanov articles by Trotsky, the latter replied: "The pen of you and Pen doesn't please me." "Style is an acquired thing," Vladimir Ilyich answered, "and a man is capable of learning; he will be very useful." In March 1903 Vladimir Ilyich proposed coopting Trotsky onto the editorial board of "Spark."

Trotsky soon left for Paris, where he began to appear with extraordinary success.

### III.

There arrived from exile in Olekma Ekaterina Mikhailovna Aleksandrova (Zhak). Previously she had been a prominent member of the People's Will movement, and this left a definite imprint on her. She was not like our passionate, disheveled young women, like Dimka, she was very restrained. Now she was a spark-woman; what she said was intelligent.

Vladimir Ilyich regarded old revolutionaries, the members of People's Will, with respect.

When Ekaterina Mikhailovna arrived, it had an influence on Vladimir Ilyich's attitude toward her that she was a former member of the People's Will who had now gone over to the spark-men. I myself looked at Ekaterina Mikhailovna from below upward. Before finally becoming a social-democrat, I went to the Alexandrovs (Olminsky) to ask for a workers' circle. I was struck by the modest setting, everywhere heaped statistical collections, Mikhail Stepanovich sitting silently in the depths of the room, and the passionate speeches of Ekaterina Mikhailovna trying to convince me to become a member of the People's Will. I told Vladimir Ilyich about this before Ekaterina Mikhailovna's arrival. There began a period of fascination with her. Vladimir Ilyich had such periods of fascination with people constantly. He would notice some valuable trait in a person and fix on them... Ekaterina Mikhailovna left London for Paris. As a spark-woman she turned out not to be very steady,—at the second party congress not without her participation a web of opposition was spun against Lenin's "aggressive" intentions, then she was in the conciliatory Central Committee, then she left the political scene.

Of comrades arriving in London from Russia I also remember Boris Goldman (Adel) and Dolivo-Dobrovolskii (Dno).

I knew B. Goldman from Petersburg, where he worked on technique, printing leaflets of the "Combat Union." An extremely wavering person, at that time he was a spark-man. Dno astonished us with his quietness. He would sit, quietly as a mouse. He returned to Petersburg, but soon went mad, and then, partially recovered, shot himself. The life of an illegal was difficult then; not everyone could bear it.

All winter there was intensive work preparing for the congress. In November 1902 an organizational committee was formed for preparing the congress (in the O.C. entered representatives of "Southern Worker," the Northern Union, Krasnukha, I. I. Radchenko, Krasikov, Lengnik, Krizhanovsky. The Bund at first abstained from entering).

The name "organizational" corresponded to the substance. Without the O.C. it would never have been possible to convene the congress. It was necessary under the most difficult police conditions to conduct complex work in coordinating organizational and ideological collectives that had only just taken form and continued to take form, in coordinating localities with those abroad. All the work of maintaining relations with the O.C. and preparing the congress actually fell to Vladimir Ilyich. Potresov was ill; his lungs were not adapted to London fogs, and he was somewhere being treated. Martov was tired of London, its enclosed life, and having gone to Paris, got stuck there. Deich was supposed to live in London, an escapee from hard labor, an old member of the "Emancipation of Labor" Group. The Group hoped for him as a major organizer. "When Zhenka arrives (Deich's code name)," Vera Ivanovna said, "he will arrange all relations with Russia perfectly." Plekhanov and Axelrod both hoped for him too, considering that he would be their representative on the "Spark" editorial board, who would keep watch over everything. However, when Deich arrived, it turned out that long years of separation from Russian conditions had left their mark on him. For maintaining relations with Russia he turned out to be completely unprepared, didn't know the new conditions, he was drawn to people, he entered the Foreign League of Russian Social-Democrats, maintained extensive relations with émigré colonies and soon also left for Paris.

Vera Ivanovna lived constantly in London; she willingly listened to stories about Russian work, but could not herself conduct relations with Russia, didn't know how. Everything fell to Vladimir Ilyich. Correspondence with Russia terribly got on his nerves. Waiting weeks, months for replies to letters, constantly waiting for the whole affair to be exposed, constantly being in uncertainty about how affairs were developing,—all this corresponded least of all to Vladimir Ilyich's character. His letters to Russia overflow with requests to write punctually: "Once again earnestly and urgently we beg and beseech you to write us more frequently and in detail, in particular, immediately, without fail on the very day as the letter is received, to inform us even with just a couple of lines of its receipt..." The letters overflow with requests to act more quickly. Night after night Ilyich would not sleep after each letter from Russia reporting that "Sonya is silent as if killed," or that "Zarin didn't enter the committee in time," or "there's no connection with the Old Woman." These sleepless nights remain in my memory. Vladimir Ilyich passionately dreamed of creating a single, unified party, in which all the separate circles with their relationships to the party based on personal sympathies and antipathies would dissolve, in which there would be no artificial barriers, including national ones. Hence the struggle with the Bund. The Bund at that time in its majority stood on the workers'-thoughtist position. And Vladimir Ilyich had no doubt that if the Bund preserved only autonomy in its purely national affairs, it would inevitably have to march in step with the party. Therefore the Bund wanted to preserve for itself complete independence in all questions; it spoke of its own political party, separate from the R.S.D.R.P., it agreed to join only on federative grounds. Such a tactic was ruinous for the Jewish proletariat. The Jewish proletariat could never win alone. Only by merging with the proletariat of all Russia could it become a force. The Bundists did not understand this. And therefore the "Spark" editorial board waged fierce struggle with the Bund. This was a struggle for unity, for solidarity of the workers' movement. The entire editorial board waged the struggle, but the Bundists knew that the most passionate advocate of struggle for unity was Vladimir Ilyich.

The attempt of the "Emancipation of Labor" Group to place Deich as an observer over relations with Russia suffered ultimate failure after Lev Grigoryevich, in the name of the Foreign Department of the O.C., which handled only émigré colonies, which included representatives of "Workers' Cause" and the Bund, composed a letter to the O.C. to organizations on the ground asking them to communicate not through the "Spark" editorial board, but directly with the F.D. of the O.C. on questions of the congress, to widely distribute the address of the F.D. of the O.C., etc. This was such a violation of the most elementary conspiracy that one could only throw up one's hands. I reproached Vera Ivanovna: "So what, your vaunted practitioner fumbled it." Vera Ivanovna said: d-a-a-a, and her expression was very expressive. "He knew how, you know, to arrange everything very well before," she defended herself. Beyond the lack of conspiracy, the statement spoke of lack of trust in part of the editorial board, which conducted correspondence with Russia, represented a naive attempt to organize control. Such an attitude could not fail to disturb.